Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Why aren’t lawmakers and pundits equally or more concerned about the $11,000,000,000 that has departed the United States to benefit the French bank Société Générale or the $5,400,000,000 sent to Germany-based Deustche Bank? And why are we funding $8,100,000,000 to benefit the millionaires at Goldman Sachs?

(Notice how big the numbers are when you include all the zeros?)

The justified furor over the AIG bonuses is diverting our attention from the real issues: Why are U.S. taxpayers funding trillions of dollars worth of unregulated gambling disguised as credit default swaps?

Keep in mind, if it wasn’t for the AIG bailout, those three banks – among several other on the list – might have gone bust. By bailing out AIG, these banks were also bailed out but WITHOUT obligation to the U.S. taxpayer. Therein lies the real stench.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

On Friday, I received about 10 emails from the Food and Drug Administration for recalls related to peanut products. So perhaps it was appropriate that President Obama chose this week to announce an effort to fix America’s food-safety system.

Food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your President, but as a parent. When I heard peanut products were being contaminated earlier this year, I immediately thought of my 7-year old daughter, Sasha, who has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch probably three times a week. No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch.

In an unusual show of bipartisanship, Congress may already onboard, reports The New York Times. It’s just amazing to me that it has taken years and years for government to take action.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Thank you for sharing with me your concerns about Arizona’s budget crisis and the harm that spending reductions will cause. I share your concerns and want you to know that I am attempting to keep any necessary cuts to a minimum and find other sources of revenue. I am also pushing to give schools and agencies that receive reductions maximum flexibility to move what monies they have around.

Solving Arizona’s $3.3 billion structural deficit is a daunting task and one that cannot be done solely by cuts or solely by a tax increase. It is my hope that we can begin to increase spending for vital programs in 2011, as new revenue sources are found and the economy (hopefully) improves.

PS: Please excuse this form letter reply but the large number of emails I receive on the budget problem makes personal replies impossible.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Because of my 25 plus years in journalism, I’ve never taken the liberty of being a public activist about much anything. Can’t be biased, you know.

So it was odd sitting on one of two buses loaded with more than 100 red-bloused moms and kids just before heading off to an education rally in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday. I emphasize moms because as far as I could tell, I was one of only four dads, but the other three were also school employees.

The rally was designed to send a message to Arizona Republicans, who are resisting calls for tax hikes to pay for the state’s expected $3 billion shortfall next year, reports The East Valley Tribune. Arizona, like California, requires two-thirds majority to increase revenue.

We arrived at a rally already in full session. (Our school has later release times for older kids, which delayed our departure.)

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Following cuts to education in Arizona, I decided to send the following letter to my three state legislators and the new governor of Arizona:

Dear State lawmakers,

I ask that you reconsider ongoing and future budget cuts to education in Arizona. While the cuts have been labeled fiscally responsible, I argue that it’s an approach that will cause long-term harm to the people of this great state.

Consider, parents are becoming MORE reliant on public education, not less, as household budgets tighten. And I’m luckier than most, because I live in one of the handful of great school districts found in Arizona. I’m doubly lucky because my son, Seth, has a great first grade teacher who can handle her oversized class of 24 children. But that’s likely to change under continuing budget cuts. By next year, Scottsdale parents can expect larger class sizes. If it wasn’t for an override tax, class sizes would be larger still. The vast majority of children in other school districts are much worse off.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

“To say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is giving it too much credit. It is a hit or miss gamble, and that is truly frightening. It’s time to find the gaps in the system and remedy them.”

As I’ve been reporting for years, the Food and Drug Administration is failing Americans. Because the agency remains broken, the outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter has killed eight and sickened 575 people so far, according to The New York Times.

And yet the FDA keeps claiming, like a misbehaving child, that everything is just fine, reports The Associated Press. In fact, the agency has the unmitigated gall to claim that it was already on the trail of the processor blamed for contaminating thousands of products containing peanut butter products.

Really? If the FDA was on the ball, why did the agency, according to the Los Angeles Times, quietly slip into an existing report that the Peanut Corp. of America knowingly shipped out batches of product that had tested positive for salmonella? Why didn’t the FDA announce these new findings more vocally? By the way, some of the contaminated lots were destined for school lunch programs around the nation.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

It’s taken two years, but the United States is finally reinstating funding for a health insurance program that benefits low-income children, reports The New York Times.

That’s because the House approved a bill that was twice vetoed by President Bush. President Obama signed the bill on Wednesday.

The program is designed for families too poor to afford health care for their children, but too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid.

While some Republicans continue to grouse that the new law is leading us down the slippery slope of socialism, it’s kind of odd: the original program was created in 1997 and just needed to be reauthorized. But critics are correct that the Obama administration will continue to pursue an expansion of government health insurance for all Americans.

When you consider how costly private health insurance has become, and how many companies can no longer afford to offer coverage, it’s just a matter of time now before this issue comes to a head.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Odd are, if you live in a state like Arizona, California or Florida, you’ve heard stories that school budgets have been or will be cut soon. In most cases, this is due to falling property and/or sales tax revenues resulting from the housing market meltdown.

While this is an unhappy development in education, President Obama’s economic stimulus plan may pump $150 billion over two years into the nation’s education budget, reports The New York Times. Congress earmarked $79 billion of the money to help states avoid cutting education programs.

“This is going to avert literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan tells the Times. The rest of the money would go toward rebuilding schools and better fund No Child Left Behind:

The bill would, for the first time, involve the federal government in a significant fashion in the building and renovation of schools, which has been the responsibility of states and districts. It includes $20 billion for school renovation and modernization, with $14 billion for elementary and secondary schools and $6 billion for higher education. It also includes tax provisions under which the federal government would pay the interest on construction bonds issued by school districts.

Providing states huge amounts of money sets a new precedent for federal involvement in education, one sure to provoke attacks from ideological quarters today and risk heavy-handed policy control in the future. Complaints are already flying: “It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Frederick Hess, an education policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, tells the Times.

But for the time being, the news of money going into education may help some parents exhale. After all, we’ve heard rumors in our own school district that class sizes will go up unless more money is found.

So while I’m unhappy about the huge bailouts on a whole, perhaps there is a silver lining for now.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Even before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, supporters of the massive bailout have consistently warned that the world’s credit pipelines are clogged. But until the House failed to approve the bailout, the problem was described in terms of failing financial institutions.

After the vote, politicians in both parties changed their message – “Oops, we forgot to mention that this is a rescue of Main Street, too!” And, “Oh, don’ worry about that price tag, because someday the U.S. Treasury will sell those homes for a whopping profit.”

The Senate figured the problem with the original bill was a lack of pork, so it jumped in and passed an even larger bill on Wednesday, reports The New York Times.

The bill not only endorses the $700 $850+ billion bailout plan, but adds $150 billion in tax breaks for individuals and businesses while raising FDIC insurance to $250,000. At least that latter addition makes sense.

The Senate was helped by the Mainstream Media, which increasingly has been jumping on the bailout bandwagon. Below are some examples:

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I thought it would be interesting to see what Americans are saying now that the vote to bail out America’s financial system has failed.

Interestingly, there seemed to be more supporters of the bail out than earlier comments first revealed, but as a whole the most Americans seemed relieved the bill failed. (As before, I minimally cleaned up typos and grammar.)

Bob on L.A. Land:
Finally someone stood up to the moral bankruptcy and financial blackmail of the Bush administration!

SSV on New York Times:
All of those now looking for “proof” the bailout is necessary will get that proof in the next 3-6 months and then we’ll all have to listen to the same nearsighted crowd weeping and gnashing their teeth over “how could the government have done this to me?”

David on L.A. Land:
Are these people insane? The Republicans will really take down the entire country? The Republican Party has denigrated into a group of right-wing extremists, and the Democratic party had better hit them hard for doing this to the US. Only a crushing defeat for the Republicans in November will send a message that, in times of national crisis, ideology must be set aside and bi-partisan solutions must be found.

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